But if Freedom should awake
In her omnipotence, and shake
From the Celtic Anarch's hold
All the keys of dungeons cold, -
Where a hundred cities lie
Chain'd like thee, ingloriously,
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime ;
If not, perish thou and they,
Clouds which stain truth's rising day
By her sun consumed away,
Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring
With more kindly blossoming.

Perish let there only be
Floating o'er thy hearthless sea,
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally,
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tatter'd pall of Time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;
That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion,
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror: what though yet
Poesy's unfailing river,
Which through Albion winds for ever,
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred poet's grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled!
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay
Aught thine own, Loh, rather say,
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul!
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs;
As divinest Shakspeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power, which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn,
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp, by which the heart
Sees things unearthly ; so thou art,
Mighty spirit: so shall be
The city that did refuge thee.

Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread,
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.

By the skirts of that grey cloud

Many-domed Padua proud
Stands, a peopled solitude,
"Mid the harvest shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow
With the purple vintage strain,
Heap'd upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region's foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction's harvest-home:
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but "t is a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Play'd at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, “I win, I win -
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er,
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before,
Both have ruled from shore to shore,
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betray'd and to betray:
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth;
Now new fires from antique light
Spring beneath the wide world's might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells,
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born;
The spark beneath his feet is dead,
He starts to see the flames it fed

Howling through the darken'd sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear: so thou,
O tyranny' beholdest now
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!

Noon descends around me now : T is the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far" From the curved horizon's bound To the point of heaven's profound, Fills the overtlowing sky; And the plains that silent lie Underneath, the leaves unsodden Where the infant frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellis'd lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; . The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line Of the olive-sandall'd Apennine In the south dimly islanded; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one ; And my spirit, which so long Darken'd this swift stream of song, Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky; Be it love, light, harmony, Odour, or the soul of all Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings
From the sunset's radiant springs:
And the soft dreams of the morn
(which like winged winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
"Mid remember'd agonies,
The frail bark of this lone being),
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be
in the sea of life and agony :
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,

With folded wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell 'mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murmur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine Of all flowers that breathe and shine. We may live so happy there, That the spirits of the air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies, And the love which heals all strife Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it would change; and soon Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again.

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silkworm in the dark green mulberry-leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
But a soft cell, where, when that fades away,
Memory may clothe in wings my living name,
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which most remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

* Whoever should behold me now, I wist, would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art To breathe a soul into the iron heart Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, which by the force of figured spells might win Its way over the sea, and sport therein; For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Ixion or the Titan:—or the quick Wit of that man of God, St Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic;

Or those in philosophic councils met, who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' By giving a faint foretaste of damnation To Shakspeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest, When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:– with thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, which fishes found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall and the storm-encompass'd isles, where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn when the exulting elements in scorn Satiated with destroyd destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep; and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread-Proteus transform'd to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood, And forms of unimaginable wood, To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time.—Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine:A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink when at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who Reply to them in lava-cry, halloo! And call out to the cities o'er their head, Roofs, towns and shrines, the dying and the dead Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within The walnut bowl it lies, vein'd and thin, In colour like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze Is still-blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I Yield to the impulse of an infancy Outlasting manhood—I have made to float A rude idealism of a paper boatA hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know The thing I mean and laugh at me, -if so He fears not I should do more mischief.-Next Liebills and calculations much perplext, with steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. Then comes a range of mathematical instruments, for plans nautical and statical, A heap of rosin, a green broken glass with ink in it;-achina cup that was what it will never be again, I think, A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at—and which I will quaff in spite of them—and when we die we'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out, -heads or tails? where'er we be.

Near that a dusty paint-box, some old hooks,
An half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
Lie heap'd in their harmonious disarray
of figures,-disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near them a most inexplicable thing,
With least in the middle—I’m conjecturing
How to make Henry understand;—but—no,
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grini
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self content;
I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound ;
I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;–and the vines
Are trembling wide in all their trellis'd lines—
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;-the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of heaven smiles, like the age of love
On the unquiet world;—while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? The shriek of the world's carrion jays,
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praiser

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees In vacant chairs, your absent images,

And points where once you sat, and now should be,

But are not.—I demand if ever we
Shall meet as then we met;-and she replies,
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
• I know the past alone—but summon home
My sister Hope, she speaks of all to come."
But I, an old diviner, who know well
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turn'd to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In acting every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion.—How on the sea-shore
We watch'd the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek:-and how we often made
Treats for each other, where good-will outweigh'd
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As it well might, were it less firm and clear

Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not, -or is but quaint mockery
of all we would believe; or sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
were closed in distant years;–or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are;
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; or how
You listen’d to some interrupted tow
of visionary rhyme;—in joy and pain
Struck from the in most fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;–or how we sought
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining the sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renew d!
or how I, wisest lady! then indued
The language of a land which now is free,
And, wint; d with thoughts of truth and majesty
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
• My name is Legion -—that majestic tongue
which Calderon over the desert slung
of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;– thou wert then to me
As is a nurse—when in articulately
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aerial way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and tow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see You will see C––; he who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, with its own internal lustre blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair– A cloud-encircled meteor of the air. A hooded eagle among blinking owls. You will see Il-t, one of those happy souls which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would -mell like what it is—a tomb; who is, what others seein;–his room no doubt ls still adorn'd by many a cast from Shout, With graceful towers, tastefully placed about ; And coronals of bay from riband hung. And brighter wreaths in neat disorder tung, The gifts of the most learn'd among some dozens of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins. And there is he with his eternal puns, which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns

Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, - I'm poor!"
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever said in book,
Except in Shakspeare's wisest tenderness.
You will see H–, and I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades, the gate
Within which they inhabit;-of his wit
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit.
He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
One of the richest of the deep. And there
Is English P- with his mountain Fair
Turn'd into a Flamingo, that shy bird
That gleams i' the Indian air. Have you not heard
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him but you
Will see him and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Match'd with this cameleopard; his fine wit
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it,
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots;-let his page
Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,
Fold itself up for a serener clime
of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation. Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge, all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in H. S.–And these,
with some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on, are all
You and I know in London.

I recal My thoughts and bid you look upon the night. As water does a sponge, so the moonlight Fills the void, hollow, universal air. What see you?–Unpavilion'd heaven is fair, Whether the moon, into her chamber gone, Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan Climbs with diminish'd beams the azure steep; Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, Piloted by the many wandering blast, And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast. All this is beautiful in every land. But what see you beside? A shabby stand of hackney-coaches—a brick house or wall, Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl of our unhappy politics:-or worseA wretched woman reeling by, whose curve Mix'd with the watchman's, partner of her trade, You must accept in place of *renadeI see a chaos of green leaves and fruit built round dark caverns, even to the root of the living stems who feed them, in whose bowers There sleep in their dark dew the folded towers; Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn Tremble- not in the slumbering air, and borne In circles quaint, and ever- hanging dance, Like winged stars the fire-fliestlash and glance Pale in the open moonshine; but each one Under the dark trees seems a little sun. A meteor tanned, a six datar gone astray From the silver regions of the milky way.

Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance;—and a bird
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sing so sweet as it
At this late hour;—and then all is still :—
Now Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have My house by that time turn'd into a grave Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care, And all the dreams which our tormentors are. Oh that H--- and —— were there, With every thing belonging to them fair!— We will have books; Spanish, Italian, Greek,

- - - - -

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,
Feasting on which we will philosophise.
And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk;—what shall we talk about?
Oh! there are themes enough for many about
Of thought-entangled descant;-as to nerves,
With cones and parallelograms and curves,
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me, when you are with me there,
And they shall never more sip laud'num
From Helicon or Himeros; " —we'll come
And in despite of “ and of the devil,
Will make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time;—till buds and flowers
Warn the obscure, inevitable hours
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;-
• To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.w

THE SENSITIVE PLANT.

PART 1.

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it open'd its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt every where;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doe in the noon-tide with love's sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.

The snow-drop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mix'd with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

- 'suspos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight shade of difference, a synonyme of Love.

Then the pled wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness;

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest.
Which unveil'd the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare :

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-colour'd cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
And starry river-buds glimmer'd by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Which led through the garden along and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flowrets which drooping as day droop'd too.
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.

And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them.
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden Gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;

For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear,
Wrapp'd and fill'd by their mutual atmosphere.